Lecturer in charge: Professor John Lennard [Room 29 – New Arts Block]

Poetry is traditionally at the heart of literature and literary studies. It is also complex, in both its history and contemporary practice, and to read it with informed analytical understanding requires a considerable base of knowledge about the poet's craft. This course systematically goes beyond and behind the pleasure of poetry to understand how poetry has meant, and how it means today.

Lectures will consider in turn metre, form, layout, lineation, punctuation, rhyme, diction, syntax, history, biography and gender, as well as many poems, in whole or part.

Instruction: 2 Lectures and 1 tutorial per week

Evaluation: 4 in-class assignments 40%
Final 3-hour examination (2 answers) 60%

Prescribed Text:
Lennard, John. The Poetry Handbook (2 nd edition, Oxford pb)

There is an associated website at http://ww.oup.com/uk/booksites/content/0199265380/ with which students should familiarize themselves.

Recommended Texts:
The Norton Anthology of Poetry (5 th edition, Norton pb)
Hollander, John. Rhyme's Reason: A Guide to English Verse (Yale pb)